Implicit Meaning
Translation, then, is communicating the same meaning in a second
language as was communicated in the first. But to do so adequately, one
must be aware of the fact that there are various kinds of meaning. Not all of
the meaning which is being communicated is stated overtly in the forms of
the source language text. Discovering the meaning of the text to be
translated includes consideration of both explicit and implicit information.
The purpose of this chapter is to give an overview of the importance of
implicit meaning to the translator. The matter of implicit meaning will be
mentioned many times throughout this book.
Kinds of meaning
People usually think of meaning as something that a word or sentence
refers to. For example, the word apple refers to the fruit produced by a
certain tree. People know the meaning of apple because they have seen
an apple and learned to call it apple. This kind of meaning is called
REFERNTIAL MEANING because the word refers to a certain thing, event,
attribution, or relation which a person can perceive or imagine. A sentence
has meaning because it refers to something that happened, or may happen,
or is imagined as happening. REFERENTIAL MEANING is what the
communication is about. It is the information content.
The REFERENTIAL_MEANING is organized into a semantic
structure. The information bits are “packaged”; that is, they are put
together and expressed by a variety of combinations. As they are
"packaged" into larger and larger units there is ORGANIZATIONAL
MEANING in the discourse which must also be taken into account in the
translation. For example, if apple has been referred to in the text and
then apple is referred to again, the fact that it is the same apple is part of the
ORGANIZATIONAL MEANING of the text. Certain information may
be old information, some new; certain information may be the topic (what is
being talked about) of the discourse, other information commenting on
the topic; and some information may be more central to the message; that
is, more important or more prominent. It is the
ORGANIZATIONAL MEANING that puts the referential information
together i nt o a c o h e r e n t t e x t . O R G AN I Z A TIO N A L M E AN IN G
i s s i g naled by deictics, repetition, groupings, and by many other features in
the grammatical structure of a text.
The two propositions Mary peeled an apple and Mary ate an apple
include MARY as the agent and APPLE as the affected in both
propositions. MARY a nd APPLE are both referred to twice
(REFERENTIAL MEANING). But in order to for m a correct
grammatical structure, we must also know if the ORGANIZATIONAL
MEANING includes the fact that there is only one MARY and only one
APPLE or if there are two MARYS or two APPLES. If they are the
same, the surface structure in English would be a form like Mary peeled an
apple, and then she ate It. After the first proposition is given, MARY and
APPLE are both old information and so pronominal forms are used.
If, however, there are two MARYS being referred to and only one
APPLE, then the grammatical form would need to indicate this with
something like Mary peeled an apple, and then the other Mary ate it. All
languages have ways of signaling the ORGANIZATIONAL MEANING,
but these may be very different from language to language. For example,
pronominal forms are not used in the same way in all languages, but all
languages will have a formal way to indicate that certain information is
old information.
Bes ides the RE FE REN TIAL ME AN IN G a nd the
ORGANIZATIONAL MEANING, there is also SITUATIONAL
MEANING which is crucial to the understanding of any text. The message is
produced in a given communication situation. The relationship between the
writer or speaker and the addressee will affect the communication.
Where the communication takes place, when it takes place, the age, sex,
and social status of the speaker and hearer, the relationship between them,
the presuppositions that each brings to the communication, the cultural
background of the speaker and the addressee, and many other situational
matters result in SITUATIONAL MEANINIG.
For example, the very same person may be referred to by various
lexical items. A man named John Smith may be referred to as John, Mr.
Smith, Professor Smith, etc., depending on the situation. This choice
carries SITUATIONAL MEANING. It may indicate whether the situation
is formal or informal. A friend who refers to him as John as he greets him in
the morning may later in the day call him Professor Smith when introducing
him at a university seminar. Different lexical forms will be chosen to indicate
SITUATIONAL MEANING.
A text may be completely unintelligible to someone who does not
know the culture in which the language is spoken because there is so
much SITUATIONAL MEANING. When translating i nto another
language the original SITUATIONAL MEANING may need to be
included in a more overt form if the same total meaning is to be
communicated to the readers.
The range of implications for translation which grow out of these three
kinds of meaning will be discussed in detail throughout the remaining
chapters. However, there is one matter which is very basic to translating
and is directly related to these three kinds of meaning; that is, the fact
that in every text there is meaning which is expressed explicitly and there
is meaning which is left implicit. The translator must be aware of these
two kinds of information. There is explicit and implicit information
communicating all three kinds of meaning.
Implicit and explicit information
As stated above, the translator must be aware of the implicit and
explicit information which is being communicated. When people speak or
write, the amount of information included in the text will depend on the
amount of shared information that already exists between the speaker
(writer) and the addressee. When we talk about something, we leave out
some of the information because the addressee already knows these facts
and might even be insulted if they were included. It might imply that they
were stupid or uninformed. And so in every communication, some
information which is being communicated is left implicit in conversation
or written text.
For example, news broadcasters in the United States will make
statements like, "The Reagan tax bill passed in the Senate today." If the
announcer said, "The tax bill proposed by the President of the United
States, Ronald Reagan, was passed in the Senate of the United States
today," people would soon stop listening to this announcer. He is
wasting their time telling them things they know. It is shared information.
All communication is based on shared information. It may include
shared language structures, culture, previous conversations having read the
same material, a common experience, etc. In every text that one may want to
translate, there will be information which is implicit; that is, it is not stated in
an explicit form in the text itself. Some information, or meaning, is left
implicit because of the structure of the_ source language; some because it has
already been included elsewhere in the text, and some because of shared
information in the communication situation. However, the implicit
information is part of the meaning which is to be communicated by the
translation, because it is part of the meaning intended to be understood
by the original writer.
Explicit information, then, is the information which is overtly stated by
lexical items and grammatical forms. It is a part of the surface structure
form. The implicit information is that for which there is no form but the
information is part of the total communication intended or assumed by the
writer.
There may be implicit information which is REFERENTIAL,
ORGANIZATIONAL, and/or SITUATIONAL. That is, all three kinds of
meaning may be either explicit or implicit.
Implicit referential meaning
In any text, the reference to certain THINGS, EVENTS,
ATTRIBUTES, and RELATIONS will be left implicit. The meaning is
there but not expressed explicitly. For example, if someone asks, "How
many people came?" the person asked may answer, "Ten." In this
context it is clear that "ten" means "Ten people came." The reference to
people and came is left implicit in the answer.
All languages have grammatical forms which are obligatory, but
languages differ in what is obligatory. For example, in English, it is
obligatory to make explicit whether a noun is singular or plural. One
cannot say, "I saw dog walking down street." One must say, "I saw
some dogs walking down the street," or "I saw a dog walking down the
street." Number must be made explicit in English, but in many languages
it can be left implicit.
Nouns which refer to EVENTS contain implicit information. Since a
noun form is used, there is no indication of who the agent and affected are.
The sentence "Help will come," has no subject or object (the agent and
affected are implicit), but in a language which uses verbs to describe this
EVENT, the subject and object would need to be supplied; that is, a form
something like the following: Someone will come and he/they will help us.
No new REFERENTIAL MEANING has been added. The information has
simply been made explicit rather than left implicit.
Pidgin (Papua New Guinea) has no difference in grammatical forms for
masculine and feminine, but when translating from Pidgin into some
languages of Papua New Guinea, it is obligatory to make this information
explicit. To translate this same material into English, it would be
obligatory to distinguish masculine, feminine, and neuter, even though the
original text in Pidgin left this implicit.
Which referential meaning is implicit and which is explicit will depend on
the individual language. Since languages differ greatly in this matter, many
adjustments will need to be made in translation. These will be discussed in
more detail later in the book.
The fact that some information is left implicit in certain grammatical
constructions leads to ambiguities. For example, the shooting of the
hunters is ambiguous in English. It has two different semantic structures.
If the implicit information is made explicit, it may mean either someone
shot the hunters or the hunters shot something. In one case, the agent is
left implicit; in the other, the affected. In translating such ambiguous
forms, the ambiguity is often resolved since the receptor language will
make explicit the implied information. However, for translation, it is
important to note that implicit information and ambiguity are sometimes
r el a t e d.
Implicit information and organizational meaning
A text is a unit. It is organized in some logical way. It is
characterized by cohesion, continuity, grouping, and patterns of
prominence. There is a flow of old and new information, redundancy
which helps signal the unity, and various ways to indicate the topic or
theme of the text, but languages differ in how these matters are indicated.
One language may use pronominal forms a great deal and another may
have an abundance of pro-verbal forms. One may have clear markers of
which EVENTS make up the backbone of the story. Another may rely on
chronological order.
In many languages, leaving some information implicit is one feature
used to signal ORGANIZATIONAL MEANING. Part of the information
which occurs in the semantic structure is left implicit in the grammar in
order to indicate old information, in order to add cohesion, and, in some
cases, even to mark theme or focus.
In the Hebrew, the description of creation in Genesis 1 uses the
explicit name of God thirty-two times in this rather short text because
God is the agent of the many actions described. But in other languages,
God, once introduced at the beginning of the translation, would need to be
left implicit throughout the rest of the story. Pronouns would be used in
some languages to retain a part of the meaning, but in some languages only
verb affixes indicating THIRD PERSON would occur. Some of the
information would be left implicit in the sentences of this text in order to
add cohesion to the story. No information is lost; it is simply made
implicit. In translating from Hebrew into Aguaruna, for example, the
equivalent form for God in Aguaruna would be made explicit only at the
beginning when the agent is new information, and then, because it is old
information, would not be repeated explicitly but would be left implicit
throughout the rest of the text. If it were repeated explicitly again and
again, the Aguaruna reader would be very confused and think there were
many gods involved in creation rather than one.
Some languages use passive constructions to indicate focus. By using a
passive construction, some of the meaning is left implicit since the agent
need not be indicated. For example, the school was founded in 1902
might be used to put the school in focus, but to do this, the information of
who founded the school has to be left implicit. The information left
implicit is REFERENTIAL MEANING, but it is left implicit to signal
ORGANIZATIONAL MEANING; that is, that school is in focus. The
semantic proposition would be (someone) founded the school in 1902. In
one language, focus is indicated by a passive grammatical form. In
another language, a completely different form may be needed to indicate
focus and the passive would not occur. In this case, the agent of the
action would need to be made explicit. In Aguaruna, for example, it
would need to be translated (the community) founded a school. The
ORGANIZATIONAL MEANING of focus would need to be indicated by a
special suffix on the word school marking focus.
Less explicit forms are often used to signal ORGANIZATIONAL
MEANING. For example, pronouns, pro-verbs, and other substitute
words are less explicit than the nouns and verbs which they refer to. It is
important that the translator be aware of the need to adjust these in
translation. Some languages will require that the receptor language
translation be more explicit than the source language. At other times, the
translation may need to be less explicit. The translator expects to find
differences between languages in the matter of how much information
must be stated explicitly.
Implicit situational meaning
Information which is left implicit when talking to one person might be made
explicit when talking to another. A woman might say to her husband,
"Peter is sick." In reporting the same information to the doctor she would
say, "My son Peter is sick," or "My son is sick." The information my son
was not needed to identify Peter when talking to her husband who knew very
well who Peter was.
Often in normal conversation, there is much which is going on in the
situation which makes it possible to understand exactly what is meant
without using many words. For example, a mother, seeing her child
about to put his hand in the fire, cries out, "No!" The child understands
the message, "Don't put your hand in the fire!" All of this information is
carried by one word, "No," because of the situation. In a different
situation "No!" might mean something very different, as when used to
answer the question, "Did you go to town today?" In that case, the
implied information is not found in the situation but in the question which
had been asked; that is, in the linguistic context.
It is quite possible for a person from one culture to read a story
written about a happening in another culture and not understand the story at
all because so much information is left implicit. For example, Richards
(1979), working with speakers of Waura (Brazil), was attempting to
translate one of their stories into Portuguese. But she found it very
difficult because the text itself did not identify the various participants in
the story. The storyteller had not made this information explicit because
everyone in the culture knew who did what at the festival he was
describing. The language structure did not make it necessary to include
this information, and since the common culture supplied it to his
audience, it was left implicit. However, a translation to Portuguese required
that the information be made explicit if the story was to be understood. In
order to adequately determine the meaning of the text, one must know the
situational setting of the communication.
One of the challenges facing a translator is knowing when to supply
the information which is implicit in the text. The author may have written for
people with the _same_ culture and same experiences as his. But the translator
or those whom he would like: to read his translation, may not have this
background and may not know much of this implied information. They
may not be able to understand his translation unless he makes some of
this implicit information from the communication situation explicit.
As will be discussed in much more detail later, the translator does not
want to add information which is not part of the text he is translating.
There is difference between implicit information and information which is
simply absent and never intended to be part of the communication. For
instance, in the example "My son Peter is sick," the mother did not say,
"Peter has brown hair and is ten years old." This is not implied. It is
absent. It is not part of the communication and, therefore, should not be
added.
If a person wrote, John made the Queen's list, he is assuming that the
readers know that the Queen of England is indicated. However, for an
audience that did not know this fact and had never heard of the Queen,
much less her list, the implied information would need to be added. It is not
absent, it is implied, and part of the communication situation. The translation
may have to be so explicit as to state, John made the Queen of England's yearly
Honors list. Implicit information needs to be added only when it is necessary
to communicate correct meaning or to insure naturalness of form in the_
receptor language translation. It will_ sometimes need to be made explicit
because the source language writer and his audience shared information
which is not shared by the receptor language audience.
EXERCISES-Implicit Meaning
A. Identify and make explicit any implicit THINGS or EVENTS in the
following:
Example:
After counting the books, Peter said "There
are 57."
Books is left implicit in the quotation.
After counting the books, Peter said, "There are 57 books."
1. Forgiveness was difficult for some people.
2. The people of Nigeria are hard workers.
3. It is a country where there are vineyards to give wine and gram for making bread,
4. Testing has been going on at depths of more than 18,000 feet.
5. Women generally get up well before dawn and long before their husbands to relight the fire and begin making
breakfast.
B. In the following, a proposition, or part of a proposition, is left
implicit.
Identify and make explicit the implicit proposition. (See chapter 3 for a definition.)
Example:
The next day John decided to go to town. He
saw the judge and had the matter taken care of.
Implicit information: John went to town, he arrived in town.
The text says that "he decided to" but does not say that
he actually did so.
1. The King summoned his wise men and asked them to interpret
his dream.
2. But I never did have to chop it with an axe because I had
brothers; I only had to use a long knife.
3. Then my mother told me to make myself a little head covering,
that she would show me how.
4. No time. Let's handle it with a telephone call.
5. 1 didn't teach after all because Mr. Jones arrived.
C. The following paragraph is a rather literal translation from Baka
(Sudan, data from Wanda Pace). The implicit organizational and
situational information makes the paragraph difficult for a non-Baka
speaker to understand. First the paragraph is given, then the added
information as supplied by a Baka speaker is given. Rewrite the
paragraph into English that will be easily understood by someone
outside the Baka culture. Then translate this same paragraph into a
second language which you speak.
When they have finished bride negotiations, they return
home. Then they appoint a clay for them. Then they prepare
themselves to go for marriage.
Added information: The negotiations are carried on by the
suitor's relatives. This is done at the home of the bride. The
bride's relatives are the ones who decide on the date for the
marriage. However, it is the suitor's relatives who make the
preparations for the marriage ceremonies.
D. The following story is a modified literal translation from Kalinga
(Philippines). A person who does not know Kalinga culture would
not understand the story. The words and phrases which are in
italics contain implied information. At the end of the story, an
explanation is given for each of these phrases. Study them carefully
and then rewrite the story in good idiomatic English (or your
mother-tongue).
Kalinga Headhunting Story
The people from upriver who came from Malaya, it is said, built their
houses at the confluence where the river meets the pool with no sides.
They were happy because they were free and they did not allow
themselves to be conquered by their fellow-man for their men were
very big, very strong, and very brave, and they were fearless warriors
for whenever they went headhunting each one carried a pot and they
went singing on their way. Whenever they arrived at the entrance of
the village, when they shouted, the shouts of the women resounded
in answer to the men's shouts. So then nothing could be heard for the
drums um-um-um-ed and there was no cutting off of it. But the
changed ones who lived around them went and had them captured by
the red-eyed ones for they hindered their work whenever their
headhunting instinct came. So then the whites arrived firing their
guns and the upriver people were terrified, for they just stood there
staring and easily captured the ones with patterned clothes for they
were their fearless warriors.
Notes
the pool with no sides: the ocean
headhunting: the act of killing one's enemy and then removing the head
and preserving it as a trophy. pot: the pot which they use to shrink heads
in, taken along on the raid so they can prepare the heads before returning to
the village
entrance of the village: refers to their own village at the entrance of
which there is a split bamboo pole with a cup on it where the
guardian spirit of the village lives. (Notice that the whole raid is left
implicit, the story tells how they left to go on the raid and then what
happened when they came back to their village.)
shouted: indicates victory or they would not have shouted
shouts of the women: who were left in the village when the men went on
the raid, shouting to answer the men's shouts of victory
um-um-um-ed: the sound of the drum which indicates victory
cutting off of it: went on without stopping
changed ones: Kalinga who lived in the lowlands and had taken on
European customs
red-eyed ones: white people
they: warring Kalinga
their: lowlanders who had taken on European customs.
whites: white people
for: this was evident because...
ones with patterned clothes: the warriors who had killed many people.
Each time they killed someone another tatoo was made adding to the
pattern of tatoos on their bodies.